This invention relates to avionics systems, flight displays, and more particularly to a flight display that memorizes a display configuration in accordance with a phase of flight.
Modern aircraft cockpits have a number of displays such as primary flight displays (PFD) and multifunction displays (MFD) showing a wide variety of data to pilots for various phase of flight such as climbing to an altitude, cruising at altitude, and descending. Each phase of flight has with it an associated display configuration displaying a number of data parameters needed by the pilot in various formats on the cockpit displays. When the phase of flight changes, the display configuration also needs to change. In addition, pilots and copilots have their individual preferences as to what they would like to see displayed during a phase of a flight.
Configuring cockpit displays for various phases of flight such as, climbing to an altitude, cruising at an altitude, and descending has always involved a certain workload for a pilot. The pilot is required to select a number of different display formats using various input devices such as keyboards, switches, and joysticks. Attempts have been made in the past to automate setting up display configurations by utilizing a series of preset display configurations for each phase of flight. A pilot would select a phase of flight and the displays would automatically be reconfigured depending on the aircraft flight phase to the preset display configuration. These approaches have not worked very well because the display configurations are preset and could not be reconfigured. The preset phase of flight display configurations do not take into account the desire of pilots to configure displays for phases of flight according to personal preferences.
What is needed is an avionics system having displays that have selectable display configurations for each phase of a flight. The displays need to be configured to display data needed for each phase of flight to suit the needs and preferences of individual pilots. The display configurations for each phase of flight should be easily changed.